


Something that maybe I already knew

by Solshine



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, I KNOW IM A HACK OKAY, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-18
Updated: 2016-05-18
Packaged: 2018-06-09 03:52:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,495
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6888868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Solshine/pseuds/Solshine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It is not a mystery to either of them who the names on their arms belong to – indeed, they have both been trying to forget ever since Toulon. But then again, maybe it is the greatest mystery of all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Something that maybe I already knew

**Author's Note:**

> Look. This story didn't give a shit if any of us wanted to read it, okay. It didn't give a shit that there were 1 million other stories just like it, I'm sure. It certainly didn't give a shit if I wanted to write it. I stumbled across the John Owen Jones/Earl Carpenter production (which is really gay, wow) that I'd never heard before, and it showed up. It's just here. Take that as you will.
> 
> Dedicated, for what it's worth, to everyone still waiting on my Valvert WIP. As much as me and this story resented each other, it's nothing on me and Exile.

The name is inscribed at the inside of his forearm, almost at the crease of his elbow. The sleeves of his prison smock hide it. Some of the prisoners wear the sleeves of their smocks turned up, their names visible as they work. Nobody questions his careful hiding of his own. In a place like Toulon, nobody thinks of things like soulmates.

All of the prison guards wear full sleeves. Some of them speak openly about the names on their arms all the same, as they speak and joke with each other during the quiet moments of their jobs. Nobody questions the youngest guard’s refusal to speak of his. He refuses to speak of most things; he is taciturn and solemn, and no one misses the omission.

The two men do not speak except in orders and growls, but they are familiar with each other as only years of proximity can do – the most intimate kind of strangers.

After nineteen years of toil, the prisoner is released. "My name is Jean Valjean," he snarls.

 _I know,_ thinks the man handing him his yellow ticket.

After twelve years of watching him, the prison guard releases his charge. "And I am Javert," he snaps.

 _I know,_ thinks the freed man.

They part, and do not believe they will ever see one another again.

– – –

It is not strange that the mayor wears his sleeves to his wrists. Rolled up sleeves are a necessity of working men and a fashion of younger men. It is befitting his dignity and his station that he would be private about the affairs of his heart. It is fitting that Javert would wear his sleeves long too, although he has never worn them short even when he was unimportant or younger. Since Toulon, he has not wished to see that name on his arm.

Mayor Madeleine is kind to a fault, although Javert has never found it difficult to find fault in kindness. It is very easy to be kind. However, it is not his disapproval of this kindness that makes him unsettled by the mayor’s gentle smile. The smile is turned usually on the people of the town, the workers in his factory. It is seldom turned on Javert himself, for whom the mayor reserves a restrained respect. It is not his exclusion from these smiles that unsettles him either.

The mayor is kind to a fault, and generous beyond fault all the way to foolishness, and smiles gently at everyone in his path but Javert, and his face is worn by cares the inspector cannot even guess at. Javert catalogs these facts in his mind as though they are important, as though he is gathering evidence of a crime. But there is no crime, only M. Madeleine writing at his desk, and walking through the town, and overseeing his factory, and receiving Javert's reports, and Javert unsettled.

Javert has never really understood the significance of soulmates, has very firmly never cared since he heard the prisoner's name called at Toulon. He has heard of many very silly descriptions, of course, but few that felt they had anything to do with him.

"They are your undoing," his mother had said a long time ago in a prison cell. To this day, that one sounds the most like truth. That, he could even believe of the name on his arm, perhaps.

But this feeling, this odd unsettled feeling under his skin, would make sense too. If someone told him that this feeling is what is the name on his arm signifies, he would not be surprised. None of those ridiculous, sentimental things about happiness and true love and compatibility. Just this strange itching, this tugging of a chain on a collar around his neck.

But it is not M. Madeliene’s name on his arm. He would do best to forget about it.

He cannot forget about it.

The mayor dispenses his smiles and Javert imagines he can feel the spot near the crease of his elbow stinging under his uniform coat. He doubles down harder on his work to put it out of his mind, but only realizes when he is standing before the mayor's desk delivering another report that is not why he worked harder. He enumerates the arrests he has made, and is dismayed when the mayor frowns. He is even more dismayed to realize he was hoping the mayor would smile.

He is blacking his boots that evening when he finds himself wishing, very ardently, that his name were on M. Madeliene’s arm, which seems even more covetable and even more impossible than the mayor being on his. Javert is appalled. He is not a man who wishes.

It does not matter. Monsieur Madeleine and the man whose name is on Javert's arm are two different men.

He will never admit, to himself or anyone else, that this is what first puts the thought in his mind. The thought, not the hope, because it is a terrible thing, not to be hoped for, and he is not a man who hopes either. 

But if they were the same man…

– – –

They are not the same man. Of course they are not. Madeleine refuses to accept his resignation. As Javert walks stiffly out of the office, the mayor says his name, and smiles at him gently, and implores him to rest. For once, Javert obeys this order. 

He goes home and takes off his boots and his coat, and rolls up his sleeves, and bends at his washbasin to wash his face. As he is reaching for the towel, he stops. He looks at his arm, whiskers dripping, at the name written there--one of the names written in the letter he received today, but not the other. Instead of the towel, he seizes the washcloth by the basin and scrubs at the name on his arm furiously, as though it is a stain to punish out of a garment. It _is_ a stain, a stain on his skin, a stain on his destiny that this man, this criminal, somewhere in the world, whether they ever meet again or not, has the power to be his undoing.

It is damnable. It is damning.

– – –

They are the same man. He knew they were the same man, he _knew_ it, they _had_ to be. His triumph is tainted by horror and disgust. Madeliene, after all, is an illusion, and yet the invisible collar is still around Javert's neck, the chain in the other man's hand. He rushes back from Arras and thinks that he wants nothing of this nonsense about soulmates, wants never to see this man again, never to hear his name. He returns only to ensure that he will not have to.

They struggle against one another in the hospital room. Valjean's coat is on a chair by the dead woman's bed, and he fights in only his shirt and waistcoat. One of his cuff buttons has ripped off in the struggle, and his left sleeve flaps freely as he swings his wooden board. Javert pins him against the wall for a moment, and the sleeve slips down just enough to display the scars of nineteen years of manacles. Javert is distracted by the scars, by the way the sleeve threatens to slip further and reveal more of Valjean's forearm, pale with years of his hiding it from sun. 

He stares at that arm, at the slipping sleeve. In that moment of inattention, Valjean throws him off, and he escapes.

– – –

Valjean holds the sleeping child in his arms as the carriage carries them away to a new life, and runs a thumb absently over the name on the inside of her small arm. He cannot remember having ever felt anything good for the name on his own arm. Once, maybe, before he had ever heard it spoken, he held curiosity, or even eagerness, but that belongs to a time long ago lost to his memory. The bishop’s mercy drove out the animal hate of the prisoner from his heart for the most part, but there has been a seed of bitterness in him always at this name. He has prayed to God for forgiveness in this, prayed that the bitterness not germinate in his life, with limited success. He has never understood the idea, these soulmates that everyone else seems to grasp intuitively. It has never seemed to him like it could be anything but terrible.

Of all the awful twists of fate in Montreil-sur-Mer, the worst, he thinks selfishly, might have been the revelation that there is room for more feelings in him, regarding the inspector, than simple hatred. He was loath to find in Javert a thoughtful man of careful mannerisms and strong convictions, of small pleasures and a surprising dry humor. He was loath to smile at such a man. If fate had dictated the significance of this individual to him, better to think it the significance of a jailer to a prisoner, and not the wasted potential of something else.

He looks at the slender thing sleeping in his lap and the name, "Marius," in black on her arm, and for the first time he hopes, for her sake, that maybe it does not have to be terrible. Maybe the cruel prearrangements of the universe have taken from him something that could have been good, but maybe her name will not bring her pain the way his has. He hopes that fervently. He tries not to let his bitterness spread to the mark on her arm, wants to love every part of her. And he does, he does, but he fears this Marius too. 

He holds her a little tighter, making her frown in her sleep, this girl he already cannot imagine giving up, and he fears almost equally the owners of either of their names ever finding them.

– – –

"What is a soulmate?" she asks him one day. 

They are in the garden, Valjean tending to his work and Cosette with her homework from her classes in the convent. Her studies are forgotten at the moment, as she inspects the name in the crook of her arm.

Valjean pushes away the dread that gathers in his stomach at her question. “Did you learn about soulmates in school?” he asks as casually as he can.

“Candide,” she answers, naming another girl in the convent that she has mentioned before. "She has a girl called Denise on her arm. She says Marius is my soulmate, and that whoever he is, he has my name on his arm.” She runs her fingers over the mark thoughtfully.

Valjean puts down his pruning shears and comes over to sit next to Cosette on the little bench. "Lots of people disagree about what a soulmate is," he says carefully. "They are someone who is going to be important in your life, or could be important. You don't know how until you meet them, I suppose."

Cosette is still looking at her name, not at him. "Do you think Marius is nice?" Valjean's heart aches. He does not think of past lives, of lost things.

"I'm sure he is, my darling," he says.

She turns her clear, piercing eyes on him, now. "Do you have a name, Papa?"

He feels he has swallowed a heavy rock. "Papas don't need soulmates," he says lightly, "when they have little girls.” His hands dart out to tickle her, and her questions are forgotten amid the giggles.

– – –

When Javert is, horribly, impossibly, the one to break up the attempted robbery, Valjean thinks that maybe this is what soulmates mean after all, this maelstrom drawing them irresistibly always back into each other's current. He thinks he would cut off the limb that bears the inspector’s name if he believed it would sever their connection with no further harm than that to either of them. He cannot face the man again. And he cannot lose Cosette, not to anyone's name on anyone's arm. He cannot.

The next night he unfolds a letter with a familiar name signed at the bottom.

She was never his to keep.

– – –

Javert would have been surprised, to be honest, if Valjean had not shown up at the barricade. If this is where he is to die, Valjean should be here. It is only fitting. It is a horrific perversion of justice, of course, the law turned upside down, that his life should be delivered into this man's hands. But it makes perfect sense of the name on his arm.

Valjean drags him out to the alley and releases his arm roughly. Javert staggers against the wall, but does not slump there and wait for death. He spins around and sees Valjean taking out a knife. He doesn't have much time.

He leaps upon Valjean, wrestling at the man's wrists with his own bound hands. Valjean is surprised by the assault, absurdly unprepared to defend himself. He grabs at Javert in turn, and the knife clatters to the ground, but it is not the knife that Javert seeks. He grabs Valjean's left arm, and with difficulty jerks up his sleeve. Valjean, looking startled in the dim light of the alleyway, allows him. He holds his arm out for Javert to read.

It's there, right where he knew it would be. Javert, the black letters say. Javert swallows. He cannot quite take his eyes away from it. It was always there, he thinks, beneath the prison smock and the mayor’s coat. His whole life, his name has been on someone's arm. On Jean Valjean's arm.

Without saying a word, Valjean bends and picks up the knife, and uses it to cut Javert's bonds. He is confused for a moment before the other man takes his wrist and pushes his sleeve up to his elbow. Valjean, says the name on Javert’s skin. Valjean seems as entranced by it as Javert was by his own. He runs his fingertips over the name, and Javert can see his lips soundlessly form the word. He is still looking at Valjean's face when the man's eyes come up very suddenly from Javert's arm and meet his.

Javert clears his throat, holding Valjean's gaze firmly. "You may kill me now," he says. "I only wished to see for myself, first.”

There is something he does not understand in Valjean's face for a moment – hurt? – And then Valjean's mouth covers his own.

It is excruciatingly gentle. Valjean's right hand cups Javert’s left elbow, his thumb coming to rest over the name on his arm. Javert, lost, floundering, only clutches at Valjean's sleeves helplessly. The world is inside out. He is drowning under this touch, asphyxiated by the soft press of lips on his. He has the distant sense that Valjean is trying to say something with this incomprehensible action, that Javert is meant to understand something by it, but all he understands is that Jean Valjean is kissing him–

Valjean steps backward like he is ripping himself away from where he is connected to Javert by an invisible seam. He inhales a ragged breath. "Go," he says.

Javert swallows again, resists the urge to reach up and touch his own lips. "I don't understand," he says. His voice shakes in spite of himself.

"Get out of here," says Valjean.

Javert's confusion becomes comprehension, becomes anger. "You think to spare me because we are – because of a name you have seen written on my arm?" he growls. "Be warned, I am burdened with no such delusions. I have always known your name was there, Valjean," says Javert, spitting the name like a curse. "I will see you arrested. I will see you brought to justice. You had better kill me now.”

"It wouldn't matter, Javert, if –" Valjean shakes his head, frustrated. "I thought for years it must be a terrible thing, a soulmate. I had no evidence otherwise. And maybe that is all we can ever be to each other, terrible, but you have done nothing but your duty, and even if it is written in the books of God that one of us must destroy the other, it shall not be me who does it.” He shakes his head again, violently as though he is trying to free himself from some entanglement.

"I could not – Javert, I would never… You…” He licks his lips and returns his eyes to Javert. "It would not matter if my name were not on your arm," he says quietly. "It does not matter that you do not intend to spare me. Perhaps that was always what we were meant to come to." He draws the gun one of the boys has given him, and Javert tenses before Valjean raises it into the air. "If I survive this, I am at number 55 Rue Plumet,” he says. 

He fires the gun into the air, and Javert runs like he can feel hellfire licking at his heels.

– – –

The rushing water, so far below, should not sound as loud as it does in Javert’s ears.

“My mother used to say," he says, "that your soulmate was the one who would be your undoing. For a while, I thought I understood what she meant." He moves one boot, and a small bit of gravel skips off the edge and down into the darkness, and the river. "But this is not what I pictured."

He does not look at Valjean, standing on the bridge behind where Javert has climbed up on the ledge, but he can hear the man's hard breathing from chasing him down.

"Javert," says Valjean, as though it is an argument against a course of action, instead of just a name. Javert feels fingers close around his wrist. His left wrist. "Javert," Valjean says again.

"What?" Javert snaps irritably.

"Come down from there," Valjean says.

"Why?" Javert sneers. "You are not my mother, or my commanding officer. You're no longer my mayor. What right do you have to ask me anything, Valjean?” He grits the words out bitterly. The river below is black as the stars, and it will be such a relief to be swallowed by it. He longs for it as a laborer would long for a soft bed at the end of a hard day. “What right do you have to take this from me? What right do you have to spare my life, to demand I spare my own?”

"My name is on your arm," Valjean says simply.

"It is not a brand," he spits. "It does not make me your property.”

"No," Valjean agrees. He puts a knee up on the stone and, carefully, so he does not unbalance Javert by the wrist he still holds, climbs up to stand on the ledge next to him. "But Javert," he says "your name is also on my arm.”

Javert chokes with what is not a sob, could never be a sob. "But what does that mean?" He demands. "It means nothing. Only a joke that God has played on me, a stone he has set in my path in order to see me fall."

"God does not play such jokes," says Valjean. The wind is high on the bridge, and whips strands of Javert's loosened hair around his face, and flaps the collar of Valjean's shirt like bird’s wings. The winds cannot carry away the stink of the sewer, with as close as Valjean is standing.

"You had not to the grace to kill me," says Javert. "Have at least to the grace to let me die. I cannot remain in this world. I do not belong anywhere in it.”

Valjean takes the wrist he is holding and uses it to guide Javert’s hand to the crook of Valjean’s left elbow. "That is what the name means," he says. "It means you belong with me.”

And suddenly Javert finds he is out of arguments. Valjean has hit upon the solution to this puzzle at last, found an answer that rings like silver when Javert strikes it. Not even his mother’s answer, as well as it has served him for so many years, unravels all the questions Valjean’s presence in his life has brought him. 

Javert’s posture crumples. Valjean steps carefully forward as though he thinks Javert now will lose his footing and fall into the Seine by accident. He releases Javert’s wrist and kneels to climb down, and Javert, whose hand is still on Valjean's arm, follows. When they are both safely on the ground, Valjean steps forward again, this time to wrap a hand around the back of Javert's neck. 

"You intend to kiss me again," Javert says, voice hoarse. "I do not know what you hope to signify by it.”

A lie, he thinks even as Valjean kisses him, his first lie as a man and not a spy of the law. He weaves fingers into white hair. He knows what a kiss signifies.

A minor sin at most. Valjean, he thinks, will forgive him.

**Author's Note:**

> This has been translated into Russian [here](https://ficbook.net/readfic/4671619)!


End file.
